ON COMPOSING by Hans Werner Henze

(translation by H.J.Nagel)

The essay was published in a brochure, published for the Henze Festival 1976 in Bonn, organized by H.J.Nagel

THE WAY OF COMPOSING can be explained as an effort, which tries to

mobilize an originally imovable matter in native state ( and presented by physical

signs) in order to get something out of it, which is directed basically against its

own specific nature. But it appears and develops inspite of this situation and is

victorious over its original stature. The result after this kind of “battle” is artistic, it

is a piece of Art. In order to promote its understanding, communiqués are

published, which try to explain details with a lot of efforts to those who are

listening in admiration. The work itself is stronger and survives most of those

explanations and communiqués. They will be forgotten, while the composition

lives over decades with its vibrations, influences, provocations,

misunderstandings and irritations.

Or: The intensity of the victorious win, which was mentioned, results sometimes

in ways of interpretation, which become necessary and which will be materialized

by terms, as for instance: message of love, the longing for death, the hymns to

the nights, the message of freedom. This happens without a contribution of the

original signs, they remain as they are, with their precision and unchangeable

identity.Thus the forms of interpretation become a quite powerful presence,

similar to waves and resulting to a necessity of domestication, and of finding an

order of systems.

What finally leads to the arising of new common terms, style, common good,

does not concern any more the author, and not the nature and motifs of his

doings as well.. He might have had a life, which was shaped by a permanent

refusal of his new reality and followed by his funeral already.

After his signs had been accepted and been put into the order of systems,

others had to follow, because the original tensions have already weaken and his

signs enjoy already an academic acceptance. A kind of new episode in music

history seems to happen and in this historically moment, numerous writers,

essayists, diligent scholars are intruding the public places, repeating the

emotions from the past and announcing the new rules for tomorrow.

What had been a daring signal for a far away and “high station “ changes now

into forms and the functionalism of dry and calculable “etudes.” The idea of an

artistic truth ends in a state of siege of a so called revolution. Lessing said ”I think

that scientists like to search for the truth, but they do not like the truth.”

But the excitement and tensions, which happens between intervals can only be

achieved by excitement and tensions and not with the means of science. The

mystery of those tensions is located beyond the order, which we are able to

recognize and it wants, that those orders are questioned permanently; it does not

want a security without risks. It wants that something develops from of the

tensions and not, that they are resulting into a process of manufacturing. Great

art has always grew into being, it was not “made”. She speaks from a position of

beauty, which is marked by searching and insecurity, and which confuses and

provokes those, who belong to that genre of so called “makers”.

Music and everything which is connected to music, is as less abstract as a

language, as death or love. Especially the fact, that she is always new invented,

that she takes away something from the superficial outer world, that during the

process of her origin a longing is expressed and fulfilled, does not permit to call

her “abstract”.

The one who has his doubts in this, better believes in the construction of a more

narrow world, which is nourished well and made more endurable by theories.

The others will choose the more difficult way, of which the end cannot yet be

recognized. It is a way into the dark and full of gins, errors and presentiments.

One should have going them and wait for their return. (1976)

*

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